This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Harold Lewis, fully Harold "Hal" Warren Lewis
Fear and risk are different creatures. What some of us fear most - poison in our drinking water, radiation in our air, pesticides on our food - pose hardly any real risk, while some we fear least - driving, drinking and smoking - kill many hundreds of thousands each year.
Macrobius, fully Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius NULL
Love and fear exclude each other.
The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy; a still rabies is more dangerous than the paroxysms of a fever. Fear the boisterous savage of passion less than the sedately grinning villain.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Myth is the foundation of life, it is the timeless pattern, the religious formula to which life shapes itself... There is no doubt about it, the moment when the storyteller acquires the mythical way of looking at things, that moment marks a beginning in his life.
When your fear touches someone’s pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The thing [of which I have most fear] I fear most is fear.
The contemplative life has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart... you will truly recover the light and capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanation because it is too close to be explained.
Capacity | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Silence | Solitude | Will | Words | Understand |
Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.
Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |
José Joaquín de Olmedo, fully José Joaquín de Olmedo y Maruri
They set the slave free, striking off his chains. Then he was as much of a slave as ever. He was still chained to servility. He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, he was still bound by fear and superstition, by ignorance suspicion and savagery. His slavery was not in the chains, but in himself. They can only set free men free. And there is no need of that. Free men set themselves free.
Character | Fear | Ignorance | Indolence | Men | Need | Slavery | Sloth | Superstition | Suspicion |
Half the things that people do not succeed in, are through fear of making the attempt.